SO big....

Danielle is growing so big. She is 5 pounds 12.4 ounces as of last night. She is getting just shy of 2 ounces of food now every 3 hours and loving it!! They are still mixing fortifier in with the breast milk to give her some extra calories and those calories are doing a body good that is for sure!! They lowered her settings down 1 setting on the high flow nasal canula. Her chest x-ray today showed unchanged from yesterday so when she gets a little more expanded they will take her settings down again. She has not had any 'spells' for days, she is just doing great. Today the Developmental therapist for the University came in and is coming up with a care plan for Danielle as St. Lukes did on a weekley basis. This helps Danielle have good posture and positioning habits.

Neurosurgery does not want her to lay on her right side of her head until she gets her stitches out next week. I saw her incision yesterday when they came down and changed her bandage and it is healing nicely, it looks really good. The bandage was stuck to a part of her hair so the surgeon asked my permission to cut it out, I said 'yes', her hair will grow back and he was delicate about it! We have been holding her when we are there and giving her some tummy time as she lays on our chest. She just really tries to move her head to the right side so we have to position her differently so she doesn't lay on that side of her head. She is a strong little girl and fights with all of her might. She is loving her pacifier!! This is great because as soon as she gets back on .5 liter canula we will begin to bottle feed.

Danielle is back in a crib. The pictures of us next to her in the warmer bed are from last Friday night. We did her bath in the warmer bed then put her back into her clean crib once she was all spruced up! It will be so nice to get her stitches out next week so we can do a bath in a tub again because that is truely a realxing time for her. We know she loves it!!

The University has a new positioning device that we did not have the chance to use when Dylan was there. I will take a picture of it tomorrow because it is SO neat. It is a tubular looking bean bag with an adult size bean bag hand sewn on the end. We position the bean bag tubular part behind her back or side and place the hand on her body so she thinks a 'person' has a hand on her for comfort. This morning I placed the hand on the back of her head, this afternoon they placed the hand on her bottom as she layed on her tummy. She loves it and it is comforting to her when we can not be there.

So Danielle is doing GREAT! We are very happy with everything, she is such a strong little girl and getting stronger every day. Thank you lord for blessing us with our tough little miracle girl.~